CHANGED BY BEHOLDING by Edison Driver

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 4, 1903

CHANGED BY BEHOLDING.

By Edison Driver

WHAT a grand thought it is that we are changed by the good we see and admire in things and people around us. We can not look with approval on loveliness or nobility of any kind, without some act or expression of ours bearing witness to a wonderful change.

There was once an artist who painted faces so full of sweetness and purity that he easily surpassed his fellows in wealth and fame. They admired his work, studied it, copied it; but the pure, refined expression would not come for them. Why was it? Did they not have the fairest models in all Paris to work from? Were not their colors just as bright and clear as his? Were their hands not trained to an accuracy that was marvelous? Still their pictures were simply common, and the prices they brought discouragingly low.

One evening, as one of these men and the successful artist sat in the latter’s studio, a young girl came in to announce that supper was ready. The evening light, flooding through the windows, fell on her face—a face of singular beauty, and the artist visitor was not slow to note the effect. A look of astonishment crept over his own face. He looked from the child to the great picture on the easel, and there he saw reflected something of that child’s countenance. Instantly the riddle was solved. He had learned the secret. Unconsciously, by beholding and loving that little one, the father’s hand had grown skilled in portraying the love and purity reflected there.

What a beautiful thought! By beholding the lovely we weave golden threads of loveliness into our own work; by looking to the strong and the good, our lives grow in strength and goodness; and last and greatest thought of all, by beholding the glory of the Lord we “are transformed into the same image.”

EDISON DRIVER.